The reason you study with a teacher is primarily for the empowerments, for someone who is enlightened to transfer power to you. What is most important is that the student uses that power intelligently and wisely.

I am a certified PADI Divemaster and a technical scuba diver. That is to say, I am involved with decompression diving where we dive to depths of 300 plus feet. But I was also recently certified for the Atlantis rebreather, where we dive to shallower depths ranging from about 60-130 feet.

I encourage you to make money and to become enlightened. The two are not necessarily different. Have fun with whatever you do because we are only here for a while.

The world is the way the world is because we think that it is so.

See your life as not just your life but as eternity. Be so completely integrated in the experience of perception that there's no sense of a perceiver but just the fluid moment of ecstasy that is reality unfolding itself to itself.

It is a dangerous assumption to say that people who drain energy "don't know what they are doing." People are sophisticated aware beings. Don't sit around and equivocate; they'll drain you more.

The Buddha taught three cycles of teachings. His first cycle of teachings cover the basics, the prerequisites. This would include the Dharmapada.